It’s time to face the facts: lightsabers aren’t real, and they’re simply not going to exist in your lifetime. The closest you can get to realizing your Jedi fantasies is through this excellent tutorial by Mathieu Stern showing you how to properly fake a lightsaber using Photoshop.

Basic Photoshop skills will allow you to simply paint over a non-functional prop lightsaber used as a reference in your photoshoot, but Stern shows us how to perfectly fake the glow that gets cast on anything near the weapon’s glowing blade. He even adds a lightsaber reflection to the eyes on this Rey cosplayer to help thoroughly sell the effect.